The weekend concludes…
So waking up after a night rain, that had incidentally washed away the small bridge we had to make to get into the house the night before, it was a nice surprise to find a new batch of scones in the oven! Anyway long story sort, I’ve always wanted to paddle the Mawddach and luckily everyone else wanted to also, so we piled into the van and headed west. The drive over the top of the moor, Is it a moor or just the top of the mountains? Was pretty wet,
On the way Bob pointed out a few interesting lines down a few river in the distance and suggested a few rivers we might like to paddle if we really fancied a mission one day! Errrr maybe, he also made us listen to Radio 2 because Barry white was on! Sunday morning, got a love em…..
But anyway the Mawddach, we got to the car park with the toilet in it and were quite shocked, at a loss, surprised to find the river not that high, it was worth getting on apparently but not mental. So double quick we parked the cars and set off up the road to the put in. As it turns out the put in for the upper is pretty much the bleakest sport on earth! The rain is horizontal and the wind is pushing gale force 10, but what a cracking little river, as soon as you hop on your off and the rapids keep coming at you nothing to full on but just good fun read and run drops and rapids.
After not so long though you come across the first “harder” bit, bit of funky lead into a sweet 10 ish foot drop, really nice soft pool really sweet. After here the river carries on much the same as before, maybe a bit harder but nothing so bad, there are also some cool little play spots few nice waves to surf and a few cracking holes perfect for throwing some creekboat wheels and massive pop outs!
But and this in IMPORTANT! When you get to a bridge with a bit of a horizon line after it get out and have a look, this is the really very impressive Rhaeadr Mawddach waterfall, it’s pretty burley looking. In lower water levels maybe it’s an option but not for us on that day cheers. So after a quick photo session next to the falls get your self back in your boat and you’re off again. The river Gain flow’s in here too, I had a quick peep up and that looks pretty interesting, next time maybe. But we continued down the Mawddach there’s a couple of really nice wave and a really good ender spot before you arrive at the 3 nasty’s, well worth a look first but so long as you stay upright paddle forward and boof they all go fine. There’s one last slot, shoot droop again keep your nose up, it’s fine and then that’s pretty much it the Eden flows in bit further down on the right, then there is the last big hit from public toilet falls and your done. The Gamlan comes in from the right down here too, we didn’t really have enough water or light to give this a pop. But again I’m pretty keen to back up there to do that again.
And then home, not quite a seasy as you might think when the Dee is all over most of the roads we wanted to drive down? There were some cracking waves on that though down by Chain bridge, maybe we need 3 days next time?
If you would like to have a look at the amazing quality shots we took on the water there is a FB thing here...
posted by Pete @ 6:22 AM
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